wrong's the new right

new jersey: right turn off I95, or trope for the shared kink in our stories, or -- as my mother says of arkansas, where she was born -- "the jumping off point," the place to flee from -- flee to in my mother's case, even if it meant marrying the wrong man; flee back to in my sister's, the right man.

in the chapter "To Find a Voice" in Patti Smith Complete, 1975-2006: Lyrics, Reflections and Notes for the Future, ps maps her moves. she isn't from nj in the way that my mother claims to be from arkansas; she got there: born in chicago ("My Kind of Town"), first stop Philly ("South Street, the hippest street in town"), detour to snj, where she played Manrico and trilled the lullaby from Il Trovatore (19).

then, duded up for the "spiritual and cultural revolution" (19) she marched up north and over east to the island across the hudson, her "battlefield" (19). as she describes this move: "I broke from the confines of a rural existence. Farewell the factory, square dance hall, the withering orchards" (20). failed painting, to words on plaster walls recited out loud inside (reving in place), ready? set, go...accelerating to cbgb's, shooting up the place with word-ammo.

is ps from nyc, then, because she found her voice en route from her bunker with Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea Hotel to the Bowery Street front line? Or because it was there, and then, that "we gave new meaning to the word 'soldier'?" (19).